Our Husband Read online

  Natalie bolted up and fired questions at the nurse, but was told they would have to wait for the doctor. Thankfully, Dr. Everly emerged, but the look on his face sent a stone to the bottom of Ruby's stomach.

  "Family of Raymond Carmichael?" he asked, his gaze darting among them.

  Beatrix rose and pushed past them, the witch. "Yes?"

  The man braced his feet wide and spoke to the floor in a gentle tone. "Mr. Carmichael lapsed into cardiac arrest again and we tried to resuscitate him for twenty minutes, but despite our best efforts... I'm afraid he didn't make it."

  The room exploded into little dots of color that reminded Ruby of the strobe light Mac used for special numbers at the club. "What... are you saying?"

  "He died," the doctor said.

  Ruby swallowed hard, her ears clicking from released pressure. He died. At least this doctor was nicer than most. When she was little and her drunkard grandfather had croaked in the shack they lived in, the doctor hadn't bothered to hide his disgust when he announced he had choked on his own body fluids. And when her mother's boyfriend had checked out in a recliner and rigor mortis had set in, the coroner had spared no detail in describing what he'd have to do to get the body into a casket.

  He passed away, kicked the bucket, bit the dust, bought the farm. Overall, the words "he died" were the best, she decided. Sensitive, but to the point. Still, her heart reeled at the awful finality of the phrase. He died.

  The doctor glanced around, as if he expected them to storm him. "I know this is very sudden," he continued, "so when you've had a chance to think about burial arrangements—"

  "Oh, my God," Natalie said behind her hand. "Oh, my God." Her blue eyes watered.

  "You can bet Raymond's not anywhere near God right now," Beatrix muttered.

  "Shut up," Natalie choked out. "This is not the time!"

  Ruby blocked out the rest of their angry exchange. When she'd passed the early home pregnancy test, she'd known in her heart that she'd give birth to a baby girl with curly hair, blue eyes, and dimples. She'd dress her in pink ruffles and teach the toddler to walk properly with a book on her little head. Then she'd enter her in the Little Miss Leander pageant and show those women who ignored her in the grocery store that her child could upstage their fat brats. And Ray would be at her side, handsome and bursting with pride, further proof that Ruby Lynn Hicks had acquired a genuine, upstanding family.

  Only now, her baby would be branded as she'd been: the dirty-faced product of a white trash mother, with questionable paternity. "One-third of all babies in the United States are born to single mothers," she whispered, for her ears only. Ruby watched the just-vacuumed carpet rise to meet her with considerable amazement—she'd never fainted before in her life.

  Chapter 5

  "Did you know?" Natalie demanded, her jaw hurting from days of clenched teeth. "The truth, Lowell. Did you know?"

  Attorney Lowell Masterson averted his gaze to his Tumi briefcase. "No." Then he raised sheepish eyes and fanned his hands wide against the pecan-colored boardroom table. "But I... suspected something wasn't quite right. Raymond was a little vague about some areas of his life, but I never imagined—"

  The door burst open, admitting a glassy-eyed Beatrix in a classic black pantsuit, and a white-suited man who looked as if he'd just swaggered off the set of Dallas.

  "Mornin'," Whitey boomed, then dropped a black alligator-skin briefcase on the table with a thwack, and thumbed open the brass closures. "Name is Gaylord Gilliam, representing Mrs. Raymond Carmichael." He paused and, from beneath the brim of his absurd white hat, scanned the room—even the empty chairs—for effect. "The Mrs. Raymond Carmichael."

  Natalie sat numbly, but next to her, Masterson pushed himself to his feet and shook hands with the man across the table, murmuring, "Ma'am," in Beatrix's direction. Natalie nodded to her, um... counterpart, as Beatrix lowered herself into the chair her lawyer held out. Tight-lipped and steady-handed, the woman seemed remarkably calm. The Mrs. Raymond Carmichael must have gotten more sleep in the past two days than she, Mrs. Raymond Carmichael, The Impostor.

  "Well now," Mr. Gilliam shouted. "Who're we waiting for?"

  "The other one," Beatrix muttered, shooting a look of veiled loathing toward Natalie, effectively lumping her into the same category as absent wife number three. The dig should have hurt, but it didn't. Nothing hurt. The doctor in her knew her body had kicked into a phase of self-preservation, so she didn't fight the cottony insulation. She did, however, have her wits about her enough to dread the inevitable awakening.

  After a quick rap on the door, the receptionist from the Paducah law office, which had made their boardroom available to Masterson out of professional courtesy, stuck her head into the contentious room. "Coffee or tea, anyone?"

  Natalie and Beatrix declined, the lawyers accepted—in anticipation of a long meeting, she guessed. The two men made small talk about traffic, Masterson mumbling, Gilliam hollering. The man had to be hard of hearing. Natalie chewed on the one fingernail she had left and studied the intricate carving on the edge of the enormous table that reached all the way to her breastbone. How many lives had been made and broken over this table as negotiations were hacked out—prenuptial agreements, divorces, custody battles, wills, trusts?

  She'd bet, however, that the faux gray marble walls had never heard the likes of a predicament such as this one.

  Beatrix drummed her long fingers on the table top, keeping an irregular beat punctuated with elaborate sighs as she shifted her gaze to the four corners of the room. The woman had a regal presence about her, an aura of entitlement and indifference that Natalie envied—how did one graduate past caring about what other people thought? Rose Marie had mastered it, though with considerably more outward grace than Beatrix exhibited. Her aunt might have liked Beatrix, Natalie realized suddenly, save for the fact that she was married to Raymond.

  Her tears welled involuntarily, increasingly harder to blink away because her eyelids were raw and leaky. She was able to stem the flow with a sharp pinch to her palm with blunt-tipped fingers. Funny, she hadn't bitten her nails since leaving home for college. Her mother had tried everything to get her to stop—foul tasting creams, cotton gloves, even Band-Aids, but the cure had been stepping onto the bus that carried her away from fractious parents and a hell-raising brother. Surely, though, if her mother were alive to witness this unbelievable humiliation, she wouldn't begrudge her a comforting bout of gnawing.

  She, along with everyone else, heard Ruby coming before they saw her. Her unmistakable high-pitched voice, the clomp-clomp of...

  Natalie swallowed as the door swung open. Of white vinyl thigh-high go-go boots.

  The young woman pranced in, pale but glowing, shadowed by a gum-popping slick-haired man wearing a short-sleeve plaid shirt and carrying a Mead binder.

  "How y'all doing today?" he asked, grinning and popping.

  "Who are you?" Gilliam yelled.

  "Billy Wayne Lewis, Attorney-at-Law," the man announced, then jerked his thumb toward Ruby. "Her cousin, twice removed."

  Gilliam smirked. "Speaking of remove—lose the gum, Billy Bob."

  The man stopped midchew. "Billy Wayne." He glared at Gilliam while he removed the pink wad with one finger and stuck it underneath the table. "And this is my client, Ruby Lynn Carmichael."

  Ruby smiled, adorably pitiful. "Hi-do."

  Masterson and Gilliam both nodded cordially, maintaining stoic expressions, but Natalie didn't miss their heightened color. They took in Ruby's head of splendid red hair, white halter top, short yellow skirt and, of course, the boots. On the outside, the men seemed neutral, but inside she knew they were thinking, Damn, Raymond, how'd you do it?

  How did you do it, Raymond? Juggle all of us? Lead a triple life? Sleep at night?

  While the men introduced themselves, Natalie smoothed a hand over her khaki skirt, then crossed her arms over her pale blue button-down. Between Beatrix's sophistication and Ruby's flamboyance, she felt mousy and...
beige.

  "Won't you have a seat?" Masterson said to Ruby, gesturing vaguely, as if he didn't want to be responsible for a seating arrangement that might lead to injuries.

  "Hi, Natalie," she chirped, dropping into the seat at the head of the table between the two women. "Beatrix," she added coolly.

  While Beatrix's eyes rolled back in her head, Natalie managed a noncommittal grimace in Ruby's direction, still torn between hating the young woman and feeling sorry for her. Ruby probably assumed they were friends because she had helped bring the girl around at the hospital when she'd fainted at the pronouncement of Raymond's death. In truth, she'd simply assisted the doctor by elevating Ruby's legs.

  Long, slender legs that had been wrapped around Raymond's waist God only knew how many times.

  Natalie closed her eyes and forced her mind back to the legal matters at hand. After all, the sleepless nights ahead would provide sufficient time to torment herself.

  The receptionist wheeled in a tray of coffee and tea in deference to the late arrivals, cast a nervous smile over the motley group, which had fallen silent, then exited, pronto. The men poured coffee into Styrofoam cups and passed them around the table with sugar packets.

  "Coffee beans have to be picked one at a time," Ruby announced to the group.

  Beatrix cut her eyes toward the young woman. "Don't. Start."

  Natalie stared at her own unwanted cup, her stomach roiling from the strong aroma, thinking how absurd that they were indulging in morning routines while her husband lay in the morgue across town, waiting for them to reach some kind of consensus.

  "Can we please get on with this?" she asked, her strident voice surprising even herself.

  The attorneys respectively scurried, swaggered, and strolled to their seats, then Gilliam and Masterson seemingly competed to see who could remove the most paperwork from their crammed briefcases to stack on the table. Billy Wayne joined the race, emptying his binder down to a plastic protractor, while Natalie wondered if sheer frustration could be the elusive scientific root of spontaneous combustion. She shot Masterson an exasperated look, spurring him to his feet.

  "We are gathered here today—" He flushed, then coughed. "I mean, we're here this morning to discuss the ramifications of the events which have recently come to light in the wake of Raymond Carmichael's untimely, um... passing."

  Natalie glanced toward the door, still holding onto a thread of hope that Raymond would burst into the room guffawing, admitting that one of his practical jokes had gone too far, announcing he was whisking her off to Rome for their anniversary. Six years ago today they had exchanged vows. Forsaking all others, until death do us part. She willed the hulking door to open, but it sat still, separating her from the sane world.

  Masterson squirmed. "According to my initial research, it appears that Mr. Carmichael, whether intentionally or inadvertently, married my client, Natalie Marie Blankenship six years ago without securing a divorce from his first wife, Beatrix Lenore Richardson."

  She didn't belong here, Natalie thought, looking around the table at people she didn't want to know. These kinds of squalid things happened to naïve housewives in Peoria whose husbands were pilots... whose waistlines had vanished... whose marriages were deplorable.

  "It further appears that Mr. Carmichael, whether intentionally or inadvertently, married—" He referred to a legal pad. "Ruby Lynn Hicks six weeks ago without securing a divorce either from his first wife or from his, um, second wife."

  Women whose tongues were sharp... whose demands were many... whose eyes or hearts strayed.

  "Inadvertently?" Beatrix asked. "Raymond knew exactly what he was doing—he simply hadn't planned on getting caught."

  "Or on dying," Ruby added, nodding as if she were making a significant contribution.

  Natalie hadn't yet divulged Raymond's betrayal to anyone other than Masterson, but not because of the pact of silence Beatrix had extracted from them in the surreal aftermath of the doctor's pronouncement at the hospital. She simply needed time to come to grips with the situation herself before deciding how much information, if any, to reveal to friends and family.

  "I'm only trying to make the best of a very difficult situation," Masterson said to Beatrix, mopping his neck with a handkerchief.

  She'd given Sara just enough details about Raymond's death to satisfy a few shocked questions, then asked her nurse to arrange for a retired physician to fill in for a couple of weeks.

  Gilliam waved in the air. "Let's cut through the crap, Masterson. As Raymond's legitimate wife and sole heir, my client is entitled to all of his assets, and to half of his jointly owned assets, including homes, cars, jewelry, et cetera, et cetera."

  She hadn't even had time to call her brother Tony. Actually, she'd had time, but not the strength to deal with him.

  "Sole heir?" Masterson fished through the papers on the table, then held up a substantial-looking document. "I have a copy of Mr. Carmichael's will, dated January of this year, where he names Natalie as his heir."

  So much to do. She still hadn't unpacked Raymond's book collection. And Rose Marie's flower garden in the back yard was getting out of hand.

  "May I see the will?" Gilliam asked, pushing reading glasses on his face.

  Plus Raymond's den was a disaster. His desk hadn't yielded documents easily—one locked drawer had required a chisel before revealing expense reports and travel logs that showed he'd spent every other weekend of the last year with her or Beatrix, but most weekdays in the vicinity of Ruby.

  "Ah," Gilliam said, triumphant. "This will specifies 'Natalie, my wife' as Mr. Carmichael's heir. But since we've already determined that she isn't his wife, the point is moot."

  No wonder he'd been so exhausted on Friday nights.

  "Even without a valid marriage license, Natalie and Raymond were practically common-law man and wife according to the state statute," Masterson said.

  She'd refused to live with Raymond despite his numerous requests. Blame it on her strict Pentecostal upbringing, but she'd held out for a commitment. And now she'd discovered she'd been fornicating with another woman's husband for nearly seven years. If she were to die of humiliation, she would go straight to hell.

  "'Practically' isn't a legal term," Gilliam snapped. "And if the man is already married, he can't very well be the common-law husband of someone else. Did you get your law degree through the mail, counselor?"

  The town of Smiley would crucify her if the facts surrounding her marriage were released, guilt be damned. The gossip alone would destroy her practice, her reputation, her sanctity, everything she held dear. The events unfolded in her head as if on a movie screen, with the absence of a happy ending.

  "What's wrong with getting a law degree through the mail?" Billy Wayne demanded.

  Masterson had already warned her they were on shaky legal ground. Raymond had left her in a precarious situation, pledging her to his debts, but none of his assets, at least not legitimately. Short of negotiation and good will, her financial outlook was bleak.

  Gilliam withdrew two forms from his impressive pile, then slid one in front of her, and one in front of Ruby. She tried to focus on the print, but her head was still sore from the last headache, and another one was descending. Mercifully, Masterson took the paper from her.

  "The law is clearly on Mrs. Carmichael's side," Gilliam continued with a cordial smile. "But in lieu of this unusual situation, my client has graciously agreed to forego her claim to the assets Mr. Carmichael owned in conjunction with Ms. Blankenship and Ms. Hicks."

  Blankenship. Indeed, she had no real claim to Raymond's name. By all rights, she should change her name back. New driver's license... new credit cards... new name on her office door.

  "In return for their silence," Masterson said, then read from the paper. "The undersigned hereby agrees not to discuss the nature or details of their relationship with Raymond A. Carmichael with any living person, and will take steps to expunge all connections to his name from theirs."


  Six years of her life, negated. Erased. Highlighted and deleted.

  Gilliam adopted an accommodating stance, his fleshy mouth curling. "Mrs. Carmichael enjoys a reputable standing within her community—I'm sure you understand how the stigma of bigamy would cast a shadow over her position and her way of life. This agreement simply assures her of the cooperation of the other two women involved to keep the details of Raymond's indiscretion confidential."

  DEAD MAN LEAVES BEHIND THREE WIVES. VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE BY TEXTING 1 FOR THE SOCIALITE, 2 FOR THE SAINT, OR 3 FOR THE SIREN.

  Next to her, Masterson scribbled a note on the legal pad for her eyes only. You should consider signing the form to protect your assets.

  Nausea rolled in her stomach, and she pushed away the tablet. "Right now, I simply want to know how and where my hus—Raymond will be... buried."

  Beatrix fingered the double strand of pearls at her neck, a faint smile of authority on her lips—not exactly the picture of the grieving widow. "After a memorial service in Northbend, my husband will be buried in my family plot."

  Natalie ached to scream. Instead, she gripped a fistful of skirt in her lap. "Raymond told me many times he wanted to be cremated."

  Ruby raised her hand. When everyone looked her way, she slung her hair over her shoulders, exposing her remarkable cleavage bound up in the white halter top. "Ray and I had a long talk about freeze-drying his body when he died and bringing him back to life later on."

  Beatrix let out a sharp burst of humorless laughter. "Oh, that's rich. The only reason I'd want to bring the bastard back to life would be to kill him again."

  Natalie's hands twitched to slap her, but she didn't have the energy.

  Besides, Ruby beat her to the punch.

  The redhead lunged across the table at Beatrix with a shriek, swinging wildly. When Billy Wayne and Gilliam dragged her off, she came away with more than a few blond hairs in her fists. Ruby strained against the men's hands, spitting and kicking. Gilliam's hat went flying.

  Beatrix's eyes bulged, and she held on to her mussed hair with both hands, her body shaking and her face scarlet. "How dare you assault me, you, you... bimbo! Gaylord, I want her arrested immediately!"